Flying the Friendly Skies with Arsenic-Laced Orange Juice (Ketapang, 2009)

Excerpts from an email sent on September 29, 2009 titled “News from Ketapang, Arsenic-Laced Orange Juice & Indonesian Peat Swamp Forest Fires”:

After being stuck in the Atlanta airport for a night and then San Francisco airport for two nights as the result of a delayed flight from Washington, I finally managed to fly to Taipei, Jakarta, Pontianak, and finally Ketapang. The flight to Ketapang was a little dicey, but after all, it was only recently that Garuda (the only Indonesian airline allowed to fly out of Indonesia), was given back their good status. Why was this status taken away? Apparently because a pilot and two cabin crew members were charged for murdering a rights activist passenger by lacing his in-flight orange juice with arsenic! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4133704.stm

…I fly back to Pontianak later this week to complete my visa extension, then back to Ketapang, hopefully only a few more days to wait for my new forestry permit to arrive from Jakarta…Pretty much the only news worth mentioning, besides the fact that our project will be moving to its own little house soon, is the interesting slogan on my friend's motorbike: "boys only dream, man really fly"...

with friends in Ketapang

...and the lack of water. When it rains in Indonesia, it pours, floods – it’s amazing…but when it does not rain, it is horrific. It has rained only 2x in the last two weeks, which finally brought a little water into the Ketapang river. At least we finally have running water, but no new water is coming into the tank, so the only way to mandi (bathe) is to use what is left of the accumulated rain water.

I have heard that there is little visibility up at camp, but I imagine that it isn’t nearly as dire as the situation back in Central Kalimantan (in Indonesian Borneo), where I used to work. Researchers were only recently allowed back in Tuanan and Sabangau, and I don’t even know if Sungai Lading (my old site) even has trees left. It is another El Niño year just like in 2006 when we nearly evacuated from Sungai Lading after fighting fires twice and lost several hectares of forest (about 20% of the site, which I learned was burned down in 2010). A Russian plane came with their “water bombs” as promised, flying over my site 7x, but only after it crashed in Sumatra and was delayed until the rainy season had already started…

This year as in 2006 the Palangkaraya airport was closed for several weeks and everyone has been wearing masks in both the city and in the forest...

at Sungai Lading after the first of two fires in 2006

On a happier note, those of you who know me well will be glad to hear that bananas are finally available again and I ate 35 of them (very small, put into a blender and then froze them) this morning! Nothing like lots of potassium to help my work productivity. I was also greeted on the street with a “hello misses”, rather than the typical “hello mister” (having nothing to do, by the way, with my short hair or tomboy appearance; all westerners are greeted this way in many rural areas in Indonesia), “hello boy” or “YOU – bule!” for the first time, which brightened my day considerably.